


Shades of Everything

by galaxyhitchiker



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Artist Steve Rogers, M/M, Marvel 616 (Freeform), Suicide, Trigger Warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-06-10 04:24:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6939541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyhitchiker/pseuds/galaxyhitchiker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Burnt edges of curling paper corners, snapped brushes, blunt lead tips, half-finished drawings of what could have been.)</p><p>Steve creates what comes to mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scarlet No. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work isn't extremely graphic or inappropriate in any way, but I have a love-hate relationship with dark fics and I know how emotionally thought-provoking (in a negative way) they can be, even if it's not a huge theme in the story. So I'm tagging this M because of that.

Fortunately, Steve can't seem to draw anything or anyone but Tony these days. Every time he absently picks up a pencil and flips to a fresh page in his sketchbook, the lines that appear afterwards make up one singularity: Anthony Edward Stark. It's infuriating, but Tony appears to find it lovely.

They kiss and then Steve draws the handsome angles of the billionare's face, hands, smile. He has to capture everything on paper- it's endearing. 

From memory, he also sketches the Iron Man suit in action- all rough edges and square eyes. Then Steve decides it needs color to be completed, so he starts dabbling in paints and concludes that he likes it.

The canvas is small and ivory blank until Steve overwhelms each with crimson, gold, or the sharp blues of Tony's suits. He shadows the laugh lines etched into his face with careful precision, taking care to perfect every single detail.

Eventually, Tony frames one and hangs it up in their bedroom. It's a gorgeous watercolor of the pair dancing, caught by some papparazzi, staring dreamily into each other's eyes as the night sky twinkles above them. At first Steve finds it clichéd, but then he falls in love with the way they just _look_ at each other, anyway, and so did Tony, he assumes. It's beautiful.

Captain America's life is dominated by the colors of Tony Stark... And he's too happy about it. 

One night he looks up from a piece he's been working particularly hard on and realizes Tony is looking at him with admiration, adoration, happiness, and everything in between. Steve smiles, knowing there's probably paint smeared on his face, but Tony doesn't seem to give two shits about it.

In fact, he seems to practically melt over it.

That night, the room is filled with quiet professions of love and wanting, steady breathing and gentle kisses. Life is almost like a dream because it really can't get any better than this, Steve thinks.

He's right, for a while. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating very soon.


	2. Slate Gray No. 2

Things are spiraling downwards, out of his control, or maybe still in his control, but he doesn't know- it's all too much- 

Steve takes a slow breath: inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. 

He still paints Tony, but the lines are coarser, sharper, paper tearing in two when he's being especially difficult. Nowadays, Steve can't focus as well, because he and Tony can't seem to come to a goddamn compromise on the incursion problems. Why Tony's willing to obliterate entire worlds just to save theirs- night after painful night- is something he can't understand. It's bullshit.

Captain America puts his head in his hands, sighing. He loves Tony, and they all know it, but this argument isn't something he can just give up, because there's too much at stake, too much that matters to him.  

That doesn't mean it can't hurt.

When Tony tries to mind-wipe him right before committing genocide to a world nearly duplicate to theirs, Steve's heart feels like it's been ripped out of his chest and kicked.

When Tony tells him he'd do it again, it's like he's pulled it apart to watch every individual tendon snap under the pressure, one by one.

Steve is breaking. Slowly, but surely. He's not sure how much more their relationship can take before it falls into oblivion. God, but how can he love and hate a man at the same time?

 

 


	3. Burnt Sienna No. 3

Steve Rogers is dead. Dead, dead, and dead. His flesh and bones are one with the Earth, part of the dirt, growing in the trees and brushing through the air. Blood split on the ground matters not because he's not alive anymore to mourn it and grieve it. It's plausible, possible, must be possible-

But. He's not dead. He's breathing and alive, he can feel everything around him to smell, touch, taste, see, hear.

Without thought, Steve crashes his fist through a brick wall in anger. He's mixing the world's fate with his again- he's doing it again- the world is dead. Not him.

Not him, not him, not him. He can't really remember, though. Sometimes there are good days, where he can remember exactly who is and that he's not dead, and other times there are bad days where his mind seems to melt over and die, like the world has already. But it's not him.

Destruction is the only thing in sight for miles and miles; Steve knows it would look like that even if he walked a path right around the planet. He knows because he's done it, and nothing has survived besides disappointing wreckage and unsalvageable remains of beautiful buildings that once towered, graceful living things that once moved with life in their eyes. It's all gone, now. It's all silent except for his lonely footsteps scraping the ground.

The Avengers are long gone. He can't remember any of their names except for one: Tony.

Steve is sure he's dead, but he's not sure why he really cares. It's just another name in the whirlwind of faces his mind seems to supply his thoughts with, only to be rejected and cast out. All of them, except for Tony.

Quietly, he shuffles into a ruined tower. It's on the brink of toppling to merge with all of the other broken structures around it, but miraculously, it holds itself up, and besides, there's something about it that draws Steve to it. He doesn't know why. It just does.

Everyday, he sees a white canvas and paint palette sitting side by side inside a room that seems familiar. It's dusty and old like everything else inside, but it's still there. He doesn't know anything about it. Just how it feels.

When he looks at it carefully, the day often turns into a good one. Steve Rogers. He is Steve Rogers, he remembers. Alive, alive, and alive, even though everything and everyone else is dead.

A survivor.


	4. Ebony No. 4

Steve gets a moment of clarity.

They're so rare now, but he wakes up to one. He remembers what Anthony Edward Stark looked like. Dark hair, dark eyes, long lashes, beautiful laugh lines he used to trace at nighttime...

He weeps.

Then he goes to the canvas and all that comes out of his destructive hands, is black. A mess, a disfigurement, something that's not meant to be. In frustration, Steve tears everything apart and slumps to the floor because he has lost absolutely _all_ he has ever lived for, and he's not sure why he's still trying. He's lost his gift. He's lost his friends.

And most of all, he's lost Tony.

Later, as Steve tastes the metallic metal of a gun in between his teeth, he knows he'll be as dead as the world. No more confusing it, then. It's simple. They're both dead.

A resounding bang.

Then nothing.


End file.
